| | 1 | Author: | Romeyn, Henry | Add | | | Title: | 'Little Africa': The Last Slave Cargo Landed in the United States  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Among the passengers of the "Roger B. Taney," Captain
Timothy Meaher, plying between Mobile and Montgomery, Ala. in
April, 1858, were a number of Northern gentlemen returning to their
homes after a winter spent in the South. The trip occupied several
days, and as might have been expected, the slavery question was a
fruitful theme of discussion. Captain Meaher, though born in
Gardiner, Maine, had removed, when a mere lad, to the Gulf States,
and accumulated quite a fortune for those days; a large portion of
which was in "chattels" employed on his half dozen steamboats, or
on cotton plantations in the interior of the state, and in lumbering
among the pines and cypress lands near the coast. Of course he was
a defender of "the institution," and, in reply to the expressed belief
of one of his passengers that "with the supply by importation from
Africa cut off and any further spread in the Territories denied, the
thing was doomed," he declared that, despite the stringent measures
taken by most of the civilized powers to crush out the over-sea
traffic, it could be still carried on successfully. In response to the
disbelief expressed by his opponent, he offered to wager any
amount of money that he would "import a cargo in less than two
years, and no one be hanged for it." | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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